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Miley Cyrus Thinks Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” Is About Her

Who was Katy Perry thinking of when she sang “I kissed a girl and I liked it”? A question for the ages!

In 2008, a few months after the song’s release, Perry claimed she was thinking of Scarlett Johansson. More recently, she told a Human Rights Campaign gala she was inspired by sexual experiences in her (pre-fame) youth. Miley Cyrus, though, believes the song is about her. Here’s what Cyrus told WKTU on Tuesday:

Katy Perry, she’s been my friend for a long time. We were actually just realizing that next year we’ll have been friends for 10 years. I think that’s my friend that I’ve known the longest. When she came out with “I Kissed a Girl,” I was doing the Hannah Montana movie, and I heard her on the radio. They said, “Who’d you write that about?” And she said me!

I was on a four wheeler actually, my dad—this is how hillbilly we are, we got a radio like attached to the four-wheeler. I heard it and I started screaming and freaking out, and she asked me to go the VMAs with her. That’s when I started doing my whole VMA controversy.

She took me, but my mom didn’t want me to go by myself—y’know, stranger danger—so my mom went with me in the limo with Katy Perry, and my mom didn’t really get the joke. She just thought it was cool that I got to go with Katy Perry. So, that’s how we met, and we just stayed friends.

You’re right to be confused: Within the same breath, Cyrus appears to be saying that she inspired “I Kissed a Girl,” and that she’d never met Katy Perry before. Of course, you don’t have to meet someone to fantasize about kissing them, so neither of these statements has to be untrue. But considering Cyrus was 15 when “I Kissed a Girl” came out, hopefully one of them is.

Perry and Cyrus did go to the 2008 VMAs together, and there’s video. What “the joke” is here, I don’t pretend to understand.